1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is generally related to an academic quiz controller system of the type used in academic team quiz competition and, more particularly, to such a system which is microprocessor controlled to provide a highly flexible system in terms of play situations and yet is an inexpensive and easily cabled system which may be used for both practice and competition.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Academic quiz shows have been a popular feature on television for some time. Typically, three or four students from a school such as a high school or college constitute a team representing that school. One or more other teams representing another school or schools compete to answer questions posed by a moderator on different topics. Typically, there are two types of questions that are asked, a short-answer directed question and a toss-up question. The former is directed to one or the other of the competing teams with the opportunity for another team to answer the question if the first team does not respond with the right answer within in a predetermined period of time. The latter may be answered by the first team member or contestant activating a light and/or buzzer indicating that they know the answer.
The equipment for such academic team competition has evolved over the years, and has become both more sophiticated and more complex, adding greatly to the expense of such equipment. Generally, the moderator is provided with a control console which communicates in parallel with response stations provided for each member of each team. From the control console, the moderator can control a timer and observe which contestant provided a first input. The response stations usually include a light and/or a buzzer activated by a switch which is pressed by a contestant. Each of the response stations is separately cabled to the control console requiring some care and knowledge in assembling the system.
Attempts have been made in the past to provide simple and inexpensive quiz controller systems, but this has usually been at the expense of making the system less flexible in operation. One such example is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,763,577 to Goodson and comprises a series of contestant switch boxes physically cabled to a single cordset for each team and each cordset is plugged into a control console for the moderator. Electrically, each switch box comprises a simple push button switch which is connected in to corresponding lamp drivers in the console. Power is supplied to the switches via a wire in the cordset connected to a voltage divider in the console so that if, for example, there are four members on each team, the cordset would have five wires, one for each switch plus the power wire. The lamp drivers in the console comprise a silicon control rectifier (SCR) which is gated into conduction by a corresponding switch in a switch box being depressed. The voltage supplied to the gates of the SCRs is critical in order to provide proper lockout operation, and this voltage could be adversely affected by aging of resistors and the length of the wires in the cordsets.
Thus, while Goodson accomplishes the general objective of providing a quiz controller which is simple and inexpensive, its very simplicity limits its mode of operation to but one. In addition, the use of SCR lamp drivers and a critical value for gate voltage to accomplish the desired lockout operation suggests that apparatus may malfunction in time.
One commercial system currently being marketed includes a main console unit with eight LED indicators, one for each contestant of two teams of four members each. The contestant units comprise a light which is designed to be placed on a tabletop and a hand held push button switch of the type designed to be held in the palm of the hand and having a push button actuated by the thumb. Each of these contestant units are cabled to the main console unit by separate wires which are plugged into corresponding modular telephone jacks in the back of the main console unit. The advantage of this system are that it is relatively compact and portable and that it is relatively inexpensive. However, the separate wires for each contestant unit, each of which may be up to forty feet in length, makes the system difficult to assemble requiring care in connecting the right wire to the correspondingly right jack on the main console, a problem made more difficult by the quantity of wire that must be handled. In addition, the use of hand held switches for the contestants has proved in practice to be undesireable since in the heat of competition there is a tendency for a contestant to wave the switch around sometimes causing the light to be pulled off the tabletop and at the very least being distracting to others because of the wire attached to the hand held switch.
More sophiticated electronic systems are known for examining a plurality of students. Consider for example U.S. Pat. No. 4,079,365 to Yamauchi which discloses a system with a plurality of response units connected in parallel to a memory and indicator unit. Each response unit is provided with a plurality of switches to allow students to enter a choice of answer in a multiple choice type of question posed by the teacher. A scanning unit sequentially interrogates the response units to read out the individual students' answers to the memory and indicator unit. Provision is made to allow a student to change an answer, and non-responding response units are noted in an absentee memory.
While the Yamauchi examination system is interesting, it is not adaptable for use in an academic quiz environment since it cannot detect the first to answer and provide for lockout of other answers. Moreover, the ability to answer multiple choice questions and even to change an answer results in a highly complex system which, because of expense of manufacture, would limit the affordablity of such a system.
Also known in the prior art is a selection apparatus disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,666,873 to Pincus which enables various competitors to determine between themselves and by virtue of a counting apparatus the correctness or incorrectness of the selection or the time required to make the selection of some display events. The apparatus is of general application allowing for aptitude testing, scholarship testing, response time testing and also serving as a programmable teacher for numerous purposes. In addition, U.S. Pat. No. 3,694,935 to Friedman et al. discloses a response and scoring system for use in teaching and testing apparatus which permits reducing the number of wires between a student's responder station and an instructor's console. This, however, is accomplished by complex time sharing techniques.